Red Sox Notebook: Clay Buchholz defends self

Author(s):

John Tomase

TORONTO — Clay Buchholz reacted with little more than amusement yesterday to charges that he was doctoring the baseball in Wednesday’s victory over the Blue Jays.

During that game, Toronto media personality and former big league reliever Dirk Hayhurst noted on Twitter that Buchholz appeared to have his left arm slicked with a foreign substance that he swiped frequently. He also believed Buchholz had something in his hair.

Analyst Jack Morris then really stoked the flames last night by not only agreeing during the broadcast, but accusing Sox reliever Junichi Tazawa of the same behavior in the seventh inning.

“If comments are going to be made because pitchers pitch well,” noted Sox manager John Farrell, “then we’ll take it as a compliment.”

Buchholz said the substance on his arm was rosin, and the one in his hair was water. Both are legal.

“Before every start, I come out here, pack rosin on my arm,” Buchholz said. “In between innings, they were saying something’s in my hair. It’s a bottle of water I pour on my head each inning. The water is basically, they don’t want you licking your fingers on the mound, so that’s just the way to have moisture on your hands. I wipe it off after every time I touch my hair, wipe my hand off.”

The accusations are understandable from the standpoint of Buchholz’ sizzling start. He’s 6-0 with a 1.01 ERA and 47 strikeouts, and such success begets scrutiny.

“I told Clay people only throw rocks at things that are shiny,” said teammate Jonny Gomes. “They don’t throw rocks at barn doors.”

Buchholz understands.

“If I had given up nine runs in two-and-a-third (innings) it (wouldn’t) have been an issue,” he said.

Hayhurst stood by his comments.

“Whether we have all the nuts and bolts of the operation correct,” Hayhurst said, “you can definitely see it and he was definitely using it beyond . . . it looked to me not like, ‘I want to get tack on the ball,’ it looked to me like, ‘I want to get slick on the ball.’ ”

Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley isn’t buying it. The NESN analyst went off in studio last night.

“The more I started thinking about it, it made me more and more angry about Jack Morris,” Eckersley said. “To me, that’s clueless on his part. If he knew anything about Buchholz, he knows how nasty he is. His ball doesn’t dance all over the place. The guy paints.

“When you throw a spitball, the ball falls off the table, and you know it right away,” he added. “The hitters didn’t complain, but Jack Morris is. I think Jack Morris should zip it.”

Bailey sits it out

Closer Andrew Bailey missed last night’s game with a sore right biceps that he initially tweaked while finishing Sunday’s 6-1 victory over the Astros. When it still felt sore yesterday, Farrell decided to give him the night off.

In his place, Joel Hanrahan closed out a 3-1 victory over the Blue Jays for his 100th career save.

“Just kind of felt a little something last time I pitched and we’re just being very precautious with it,” Bailey said. “We got a lot of guys down there that can do a lot of different jobs. They want to be smart about it and take the extra time. Shouldn’t be more than a couple days.”

Walk before you run

While much has been made of Dustin Pedroia’s relative power outage thus far — he has no homers and only six extra-base hits — he has more than compensated in at least two other areas.

In his first 27 games, Pedroia has 19 walks and six stolen bases. His career highs in those categories are 86 and 26, each set in 2011, but at his current pace, he’ll finish with 114 walks and 36 steals.

“And zero bombs,” Pedroia noted. “I stink.”

He was kidding.

“You play so many games, sometimes you walk more in a couple-week stretch, and some weeks you hit home runs,” he said. “At the end, everything is where it normally is. I think it’s just the times I’ve gotten an opportunity to go (steal), I’ve gone. It’s not like I’m trying to do more or less of anything.”

As for the walks, they’re a byproduct of his continuing evolution as a hitter.

“You get smarter in knowing yourself. . . . Just take my walk and pass it on to the next guy,” Pedroia said, “and hopefully they come at him differently than they came at me.” . . .

Farrell declared outfielder Shane Victorino available, and expects he’ll return to action tonight in Texas. Victorino hasn’t played since April 24, thanks to a sore back.